The initiative to reconcile with perpetrators of political violence was mooted by headman Zimnyama and other community members in ward 2 and surrounding areas after realizing that the national healing organ was lagging behind in dealing with the national healing exercise in line with the Global Political Agreement (GPA).
During the community healing exercise, victims of political violence narrated their experiences at the hands of Zanu (PF) supporters and soldiers based at Chichi boarder post. I was thoroughly beaten by very young boys who left me unconscious. The painful part is that those boys are our children from our neighbourhood. We all knew that they were being used but there was nothing we could have done to stop them, said a victim who only identified himself as Ndlovu.
Ndlovu, who during the meeting pin pointed one of the Zanu (PF) youths who was involved in violence, said he was willing to forgive in order to live harmoniously with his perpetrators. The youth, Milos Ncube, admitted tormenting opposition supporters during the run up to the election and asked for forgiveness. During the meeting headman Zimnyama also related how his subjects were being manipulated in the past elections by Zanu (PF) leaders who would call political meetings under the name of the headman.
Forgiveness should happen regardless of the commotion which happened during the past elections. We were called as headman to gather our people for meetings. It was those people who used to stay in bases who would tell us to bring sour people at a specified date for vetting so that the people can tell us which political party they prefer, said headman Zimnyama.
Post published in: News